Title

Syncromy in orange major

Artist

Roland Wakelin

About

What convinced the cautious Wakelin to embark on an interlude of avant-gardism around 1919 can only be surmised. In that year, with Roy de Maistre, he showed 'colour harmonies' - tiny chromatic experiments without precedent in Australian painting. Older by a few years than his co-exhibitor, Wakelin was feasibly fired by a spirit of competition and camaraderie. 'Syncromy in orange major' is a landscape, but one in which the structural underpinnings of place have been extracted, stripped, and presented for pure aesthetic consideration, not for descriptive purposes. A rare handful of related studies survive, Wakelin having revoked the enterprise in 1920.